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Metalworking (rec.crafts.metalworking) Discuss various aspects of working with metal, such as machining, welding, metal joining, screwing, casting, hardening/tempering, blacksmithing/forging, spinning and hammer work, sheet metal work. |
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#1
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Melting Dental Gold
To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife,
which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank -- Here's some of my work: http://www.franksknives.com |
#2
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Melting Dental Gold
The only way to be 100% sure of the chemical composition would be to
have it professionally assayed. Separately, you have to remove the extraneous or undesired elements. To be totally honest, I'd be tempted to tell the buyer to buy the proper alloy in new material. I think it is too hard to make a high-quality product from the jewelery equivalent of "mystery metal". |
#3
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Melting Dental Gold
"woodworker88" The only way to be 100% sure of the chemical composition would be to have it professionally assayed. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ "Splain to him that it is not a jewelry quality alloy, and offer him a choice--either buy some other gold, or play with this at his risk. What can you both lose? You could melt this down and make a simple casting, just to see how it turns out. It's not going to disappear, and will probably be more attractive (less disgusting) even if it doesn't work out for the knife. |
#4
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Melting Dental Gold
I'd say take the dental gold to a refiner (minus the bridge fittings) and
trade it in for casting shot of known alloy and karat. The refiner will give you the value of the gold content, less a fee. That way, you won't waste your time messing around with an odd alloy that may not work with your casting process. Make sure to get enough to provide a button and sprue. Andrew Werby www.computersculpture.com "Frank J Warner" wrote in message news:200420081037568634%warnerf@veriSPAMMERSDIEzon .net... To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank -- Here's some of my work: http://www.franksknives.com |
#5
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Melting Dental Gold
"Frank J Warner" wrote in message news:200420081037568634%warnerf@veriSPAMMERSDIEzon .net... How can I make this guy's thumb stud? Look in your local yellow pages for "dental labs". Knock on a door or two; smile! Ask to talk to the guy who does the casting. Hopefully, he/she will give you a bit of a tour and discuss casting temperatures and methods. You might want to arrive late in the day, since the casting person is usually the last to leave in the evening. Don't be surprised to discover that person does jewelry casting "on the side" or as a hobby. A dental lab is nothing more that a miniature foundry/machine shop. The dentist gives them a mold of the patient's mouth. From that, a technician designs the cap or bridge and carves it out of wax. Then the part is cast from dental alloy using the "lost wax" method. Not all dental alloy is gold-based. Vaughn |
#6
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Melting Dental Gold
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:37:56 -0700, Frank J Warner wrote:
To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank Set the crowns into the handle for the thumb stud? It'll look as impressive as hell, in a very peculiar way. -- Tim Wescott Control systems and communications consulting http://www.wescottdesign.com Need to learn how to apply control theory in your embedded system? "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" by Tim Wescott Elsevier/Newnes, http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html |
#7
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Melting Dental Gold
You probably need to post alt.rec.nazis who have plenty of experience in
that sort of thing. |
#8
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Melting Dental Gold
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:19:35 GMT, "Harold and Susan Vordos"
wrote: (No snipage due to non propagation of original. See note to Harold at bottom) "Frank J Warner" wrote in message news:200420081037568634%warnerf@veriSPAMMERSDIEzo n.net... snip---- I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. Smart man! Speaking as a person that refined precious metals for well over 20 years, there's nothing wrong with using dental gold for ornamentation as long is it does not require any rolling. It is hard to roll, by design. Otherwise it wouldn't serve well for the intended purpose. If you intend to cast a given configuration, go for it, with caution. Be advised that it is not uncommon for a tooth that has an amalgam filling to be capped with gold, so when you melt the alloy, you may get an emission of mercury vapors. That can ruin your day if you breath them. I recommend you break up the teeth by using a hammer and anvil. If there's any silver amalgam, do remove it mechanically, otherwise you risk the fumes of which I spoke, but more importantly, you'll contaminate the gold alloy and render it pretty much useless because of the other constituents of the amalgam. The color of dental gold isn't necessarily pretty, but it will serve well for ornamentation if well polished. Should you find any of them in the lot you received, do not mix any of the white alloys with the yellow gold. Separate them before doing any melting. Some of them are alloys of the platinum group, but the typical white metal found in the mouth is a high temperature alloy that contains no precious metals. If you melt gold with the metal, it will get coated and you'll lose the amount that sticks. It's typically very hard, and breaks instead of bending. It is also quite blue/white as compared to platinum alloys, which tend to be colored more towards yellow----much like nickel. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. Melting gold alloys with anything but an oxygen assisted torch can be a real challenge. What I'd suggest is to clean the gold well by mechanical means (anvil and hammer, as I suggested earlier), then go to a jewelry supply house and ask for a small melting dish. They're made of a white clay (don't buy one made of brown clay-----they aren't very good quality). Before you attempt to use the dish, it should be heated slowly, to drive out residual moisture. Once it has been heated above 212 degrees and it appears to be stable, play your torch on the dish uniformly, until it is at a dull red heat. At that point, sprinkle borax over the entire inside surface of the dish, and melt it. Do this until the dish has a light coating of borax glass----but not enough to puddle. That way when you melt the gold, it won't stick to the dish---and will pour easily from the spout. Make sure the spout is covered even beyond the inside of the dish. Melting with your furnace will work, but it's much slower, and isn't a requirement. Any questions? Feel free to contact me on the side. Harold Sorry to not add anything, but I know very little about this subject. Harold, TDS is no longer propagating out to the rest of usenet. I reported this in tdsnet.general on the 12th and have received no reply. (Also switched my posting to Easynews / Forte APN.) Saw a post by you and remembered to look at it more closely *before* I downloaded the body. It never made it to either NSP I have configured. Might want to check for your recent posts on Google groups. I think TDS was broke for over a week before I noticed. -- William |
#9
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Melting Dental Gold
In article , Frank J
Warner wrote: To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank Replying to my own post, I melted one of the small crowns not attached to the main bridge piece with a propane torch this afternoon. It melted just like one of those old dimes I used to melt with my daddy's propane torch back in the 60s; the real silver lady liberty dimes. The resulting lump was more silver than gold in color, so I suspect this amalgam is heavy with silver. The bottom line is that it melted in a familiar way, so I'm probably able to melt and cast the remainder into a piece I can machine for a thumb stud. The color will be slightly off. This knife uses pre-ban elephant ivory for the scales, and I'm using gold-plated screws to hold it all together. The thumb stud will be halfway between the color of the blade and the color of the screws. -Frank -- Here's some of my work: http://www.franksknives.com |
#10
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Melting Dental Gold
"Frank J Warner" wrote in message news:200420081644277464%warnerf@veriSPAMMERSDIEzon .net... In article , Frank J Warner wrote: To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank Replying to my own post, I melted one of the small crowns not attached to the main bridge piece with a propane torch this afternoon. It melted just like one of those old dimes I used to melt with my daddy's propane torch back in the 60s; the real silver lady liberty dimes. The resulting lump was more silver than gold in color, so I suspect this amalgam is heavy with silver. The bottom line is that it melted in a familiar way, so I'm probably able to melt and cast the remainder into a piece I can machine for a thumb stud. The color will be slightly off. This knife uses pre-ban elephant ivory for the scales, and I'm using gold-plated screws to hold it all together. The thumb stud will be halfway between the color of the blade and the color of the screws. -Frank -- Here's some of my work: http://www.franksknives.com What about giving your dentist a call and see if he or she can tell you the composition basics and point you to a lab to get the finite details? Dentists may be worth something besides pain now! All the best, Rob |
#11
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Melting Dental Gold
On 2008-04-20, woodworker88 wrote:
The only way to be 100% sure of the chemical composition would be to have it professionally assayed. Separately, you have to remove the extraneous or undesired elements. To be totally honest, I'd be tempted to tell the buyer to buy the proper alloy in new material. I think it is too hard to make a high-quality product from the jewelery equivalent of "mystery metal". I think that if those teeth survived 40 years in the customers' mouth, they will survive on the decorative knife. The cheapest would be to pay a jeweler to cast them to the desired shape, IMHO. I agree that it is a mystery metal, but its properties have already been validated. -- Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by more readers you will need to find a different means of posting on Usenet. http://improve-usenet.org/ |
#12
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Melting Dental Gold
The gold plated screws said it all.
What are they - 23 ctw ? color matching might be a nightmare. I'd talk to the man and see if selling the gold (as is) to a dental lab and with that money buy the quality gold. If you need to cast and can't - there are jewelry makers that can. Martin Martin H. Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net TSRA, Endowed; NRA LOH & Patron Member, Golden Eagle, Patriot's Medal. NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member. http://lufkinced.com/ Frank J Warner wrote: In article , Frank J Warner wrote: To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank Replying to my own post, I melted one of the small crowns not attached to the main bridge piece with a propane torch this afternoon. It melted just like one of those old dimes I used to melt with my daddy's propane torch back in the 60s; the real silver lady liberty dimes. The resulting lump was more silver than gold in color, so I suspect this amalgam is heavy with silver. The bottom line is that it melted in a familiar way, so I'm probably able to melt and cast the remainder into a piece I can machine for a thumb stud. The color will be slightly off. This knife uses pre-ban elephant ivory for the scales, and I'm using gold-plated screws to hold it all together. The thumb stud will be halfway between the color of the blade and the color of the screws. -Frank ----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.pronews.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups ---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =--- |
#13
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Melting Dental Gold
I missed the Staff meeting, but the Memos showed that Frank J Warner
wrote on Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:44:27 -0700 in rec.crafts.metalworking : The color will be slightly off. This knife uses pre-ban elephant ivory for the scales, and I'm using gold-plated screws to hold it all together. The thumb stud will be halfway between the color of the blade and the color of the screws. Cool. At least it sounds cool looking. You may want to explain how it is that the "gold" bridgework melted down into a less 'gold' color. tschus pyotr -- pyotr filipivich "I had just been through hell and must have looked like death warmed over walking into the saloon, because when I asked the bartender whether they served zombies he said, ‘Sure, what'll you have?'" from I Hear America Swinging by Peter DeVries |
#14
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Melting Dental Gold
On Apr 20, 7:37 am, Frank J Warner
wrote: To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank -- Here's some of my work:http://www.franksknives.com It's been cast once so you can probably cast it again. I seem to remember there's a way to remove nongold metals from the surface (an acid etch or something) You'd have to look for it. Karl |
#16
Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Melting Dental Gold
On Sun, 20 Apr 2008 16:44:27 -0700, Frank J Warner wrote:
In article , Frank J Warner wrote: To make a long story short, a customer wants a very special knife, which is mostly built. But he wants embellishments on the knife that I've never attempted before, so I'm seeking advice from the good and knowledgeable people in this group. He wants a solid gold thumb stud, and he sent me the gold. It is, for the unsqueamish, a dental bridge and a couple of gold crowns, apparently harvested from his own mouth a few years ago when he plowed into a bridge abutment and ate the steering wheel. The doctors had to reconstruct his face, but they saved his gold teeth, which he sent to me for this project. Yeah. He sent me his teeth. You can stop gaping now. Metal content ensues: I've looked online and found that dental gold can contain lots of other metals, including platinum, palladium, silver and even chromium, copper and zinc. No way to tell what's in this guy's teeth. The fittings don't look like gold. They look like untarnished copper. They don't have the look of a 24 karat grille, but they are 40 years old. I've melted and cast small gold parts before, but only from gold that was 100% identifiable in terms of alloy. This is a different situation. I have no way to know what's in this amalgam. I'm afraid to put a torch to it. My tooling includes a heat-treating oven that can reach 2200° F, a propane torch and an AO rig. I have crucibles for precious metal melting. How can I make this guy's thumb stud? -Frank Replying to my own post, I melted one of the small crowns not attached to the main bridge piece with a propane torch this afternoon. It melted just like one of those old dimes I used to melt with my daddy's propane torch back in the 60s; the real silver lady liberty dimes. The resulting lump was more silver than gold in color, so I suspect this amalgam is heavy with silver. The bottom line is that it melted in a familiar way, so I'm probably able to melt and cast the remainder into a piece I can machine for a thumb stud. The color will be slightly off. This knife uses pre-ban elephant ivory for the scales, and I'm using gold-plated screws to hold it all together. The thumb stud will be halfway between the color of the blade and the color of the screws. -Frank Show it to the customer. I if he doesn't want to come out and look tell him that it doesn't match and you won't be responsible for the aesthetics of the thumb stud - or get it in writing. Surprises to the customer can be painful all around, and they often change their minds over aesthetic issues like this. Seeing _is_ believing, but not all folks (even, or perhaps especially, those with money) are wise enough to know this. -- Tim Wescott Control systems and communications consulting http://www.wescottdesign.com Need to learn how to apply control theory in your embedded system? "Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" by Tim Wescott Elsevier/Newnes, http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html |
#17
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Melting Dental Gold
"Mark F" wrote in message news:qZ%Oj.80057$Cj7.71472@pd7urf2no... wrote: Labs around here aren't re-using take-outs. Too many inclusions of things that create minor spattering and surprises. For a variety of reasons that is exactly correct. In general, dental labs only use new alloy. They send all used metal to a smelting/recycling facility. Once a year or so, they even roll up their old carpets and send them out for smelting (like the golden fleece). Even the dust from their vacuums may get the royal treatment. Vaughn |
#18
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Melting Dental Gold
On Apr 21, 12:03 pm, "Vaughn Simon"
wrote: "Mark F" wrote in message news:qZ%Oj.80057$Cj7.71472@pd7urf2no... wrote: Labs around here aren't re-using take-outs. Too many inclusions of things that create minor spattering and surprises. For a variety of reasons that is exactly correct. In general, dental labs only use new alloy. They send all used metal to a smelting/recycling facility. Once a year or so, they even roll up their old carpets and send them out for smelting (like the golden fleece). Even the dust from their vacuums may get the royal treatment. Vaughn I wouldn't use it either if I was a dental lab or a jeweler. Not worth the cost of failure. As long as his pattern is easily reproducible I'd give it a try. I do like the idea of mounting the unaltered dental bits though. Karl |
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